Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

A derelict who was either Indian or sunburned so often that he looked like one emerged from the foliage downstream, togaed in an unrolled sleeping bag. This man nodded at Pete like he recognized in him a shared trouble, and came over and sat on the fallen tree next to him. Pete willed him away, but the man didn’t move or speak. Pete drank. The man leaned over to say something, but stopped, leaned away. He leaned over again, and back again, as if there was some confidence he could not evict from his brain.

“Get away,” Pete grumbled.

The man stood. Outrages having little to do with the present situation beginning to roil his features.

“Wait. Sit down.” He patted the log. “Sit down.”

The man dropped and Pete handed over the bottle. The man drank and then began to stutter out whatever it was he’d been trying to say.

“Just let’s be quiet a minute,” Pete said.

In Flipper’s Casino, Shane, Spoils, and Yance hunched around the machine where Spoils was on a tear at nickel keno. Laughing among pale patrons on the stools in front of the machines arranged along the walls. Not a soul played pool or sat at the tables or ordered or ate any food. All perched like ghouls in front of their machines.

Pete now deep in his cups stumbled in and sidled up to them, and Shane doubletook him and said, “Holy shit, Petey!” and grabbed him with his big hands. He shook him and hollered joyfully in his face. An ugly, gap-toothed, red-haired giant.

“Where you been, professor?” Shane asked.

Pete grinned. He smelled of the river water and whiskey he’d been in.

“Over…,” he mumbled, throwing a thumb above his shoulder. “You know. Down by the river.”

“Drunk by the river,” Shane said proudly to Spoils and Yance. “Old Pete. Lookit you.”

Shane’s paws on his shoulders held him forth to Spoils and Yance, who took turns looking him close in the face to see his eyes swimming and dishing like half-full shot glasses.

“You got a puddle down around your feet there, Pete,” Yance said.

“So I do.”

“Oh, you are good and peppered.”

“Been in the river, have ya?”

“Old Pete. Gosh.”

“Get him to a table.”

“Whishkey.”

“Get him a beer . You need to sober up a skosh.”

Spoils printed out his ticket, and together they led Pete over to the cage, where Spoils collected his winnings and then to the bar where he ordered a pitcher. They sat at a crooked table that spilled the heads off their beers. A thing you couldn’t rest your arms on. The beer in eight-ounce plastic mugs.

“Easy Pete, the table’s crooked.”

“My arm’s… my arm’s all wet.”

“Look at this guy. Grab another table, Spoils.”

“Isss all right. I’m a keep my beer in my lap.”

“You still up in Tenmile?”

He gestured in some way that suggested he was indeed still in Tenmile.

“You okay, Pete?” Spoils asked. “He don’t look good.”

“No he don’t.”

“M’aright.”

“Your eyes are a couple of setting suns, professor. Here, drink your beer. Gotta get some fluids in you. There you go.”

A cadaverous good-timer of the sort usually clutched to the back of a motorbike appeared in the door. She sized up the room and beelined for Pete. She put her arm on his neck and began to deposit herself in his lap. Her elbow was like a shiv in his breast. He dropped his beer.

“Fuck, lady. You spilled his beer,” Shane said.

Shane pulled on her, but she wrapped her arm around Pete’s neck. Yelling commenced. For her to get out of here. Pete still wondering who this guy was.

The crone snarled at him as the bartender lifted the hinged section of the bar. Her fingers dug in when the bartender and Shane tried to unhook her from Pete, and he cackled until she cut off his air. He yelped when she had a fist of his hair.

“She ain’t lettin go. Come on, bitch, let go.”

Yance handed him a fresh beer and he took it as though he might simply observe these happenings. She yanked and Pete dropped his cup. He swore then and took the woman’s fist full of his hair and mashed her knuckles into his own skull until she cried out and let go, a technique he’d been trained to deploy with raging children. Muscle memory. Shane and the bartender dragged her out, kicking the whole way like a dancing skeleton. Violent promises exchanged in the entryway by the gumball and cigarette machines. Shane returned, utterly unfazed, so happy to see him. Saying his name over and over. Pete, ol Pete.

The keno music dinged idiotically. Spoils counted his money.

“It’s a good thing I did so well at keno today. I was about busted.”

“Get a fuckin job, dummy.”

“I have one. A couple three days a week for that fencing outfit in Lolo. I don’t get paid shit.”

“Why in the hell are you working three days, Spoils?” Shane asked. “Goddamn.”

Spoils did numbers with his thumb and forefinger, some math that involved his knuckles. Shook his head.

“Shit. I don’t think I can get by on just two.”

They laughed at Spoils who didn’t let on whether he was sincere, and there was shoving at the doorway where the bartender still argued with the woman, and in spilled Gator and Kev with three gals laughing through squinched faces and tottering on high heels. Tight jeans sideseamed to their legs. Gator and Kev going “Ho! Pete!” and slapping his back and making fond introductions. Ursula, Kimmie, and some girl else. Ursula’s T-shirt lashed across her tremendous boobs, reading I WISH THESE WERE BRAINS. Kimmie spanked her eyelashes at Pete, and he lit up from within and resolved to fuck the first thing that would let him. Kev pulled Kimmie to the pool table. Ursula and the other one weaved through the crooked tables to the bar. Little rosy bottles fetched up out of the cooler and spiffed open. Pinkies aloft, the ladies sipped fancily.

Shane took the back of Pete’s neck in his palm.

“We need to go to a bar bar. Liquor.”

Pete nodded loosely.

Time began to pass unheeded.

They assembled themselves giggling in the backseat of a Plymouth Gran Fury. Ursula settled onto his lap. He spread his legs some to accommodate her.

“I’m not too heavy, hon?”

He patted her leg to say no, she wasn’t.

“I’m crushing this poor thing, Nancy. With my big fat ass.”

Nancy ceased cleaning Gator’s ear with her tongue.

“He looks all right,” she said.

“Something better than all right,” Ursula said to him.

Shane fired up the engine. A leonine roar and they reversed and screamed out, tires and women both.

Ursula pushed his hair behind his ears. His chin pillowed on her perfumed tits. A bitter smell from her armpits. We’re all animals. Just dancing bears in tutus and monkeys with cigarettes. Painted up and stuffed into clown cars.

“You’re a handsome thing,” she whispered. “Is your dick skinny? I bet you have a fat one.”

Even in the depths of his stupor, Pete blushed. She tilted his head back and kissed his face and then deposited a sluggard tongue in his mouth. She moved the lukewarm thing about and detached herself and checked for the effect on him. This close she was rather unlovely, but he took a handful of her tit and groped for an elusive nipple under all that fabric of shirt and bra. “My” she breathed, and slavered about his mouth almost like she was looking for something. Gator watched, his woman constantly turning him by the chin to kiss her. The one named Kimmie over with Kev or maybe Spoils too, who could tell, the whole backseat a rolling cart of near to fuck.

The pop and ping of gravel. Skid. Shane killed the engine, and they tumbled out of the car and into the sun rebounding off the white gravel.